Brewery fire touches local residents

Friday

May 30, 2008 at 12:01 AMMay 30, 2008 at 6:38 PM

Local residents reacted to the sight of the F.X. Matt Brewing Co., one of Utica's most venerable institutions, engulfed in flames. The fire damaged a processing building, forced the evacuation of hundreds of West Utica residents and sent a pungent plume of of black smoke across downtown.

Fire was ‘scary’
Mark Doolen of Utica works in the F.X. Matt Brewery’s sanitation department and was in the building when the fire broke out.

“It was a little — well actually, a lot — scary,” he said.

He’d just finished cleaning a machine when the alarm went off, he said.

Fire cancels event
A busload of disabled adults on its way to a Catholic Charities ceramics program at the Westside Senior Center on Court Street was turned around Thursday night because of the toxic smoke pouring from the F.X. Matt brewery.

Carleen Gilot, coordinator of social recreation, and Mark Pawlikowski, program assistant, said they were worried about the smoke and the brewery itself.

“That was one of the things Utica has going for it,” Pawlikowski said of the brewery.

Gilot sat at a desk with a sad look on her face after cancelling the ceramics event.

“I feel bad for the brewery,” she said. “That’s one of the only things we have left in the city.”

Child frightened by fire
For Savannah Riquelme, 7, the Saranac fire meant a night of uneasiness.

The fire broke out only a couple blocks from her home on Court Street, and Riquelme said she was scared.

“I don’t want to sleep in my room,” she said.

Her mother, Janet Riquelme, said she first heard about the fire on television and was worried about the toxic smoke because of her two children.